Quicksilver [Unafraid RW]

[1] prison syndrome

FOUR WEEKS IN confinement wasn't as much fun as it sounded.

Any confinement at all probably didn't sound fun, but I was used to it. In fact, within my first twenty-four hours within any given prison cell, I would have it modified to accommodate my personal wishes. There wasn't much in a prison cell that could be modified, but trust me — add a little creativity with too much time on your hands and boom! — you had a personalized prison cell.

You obviously couldn't give it the full makeover, and had to deal with leaving the dreadful walls and floors of heat-treated carbon steel (an upgrade from the typical concrete — as it was a much stronger component — that had been applied to all prisons some twenty years ago when they were being "renovated" due to the high escape rates, a fact I'd learned from Backstrom) completely blank, as well as the matching bars. Still, there were a few other ways to personalize your cell.

Take me for example: Upon entry into the six-by-eight room, I instantly took up the pillow — which almost always was more brown than white, its original color — and threw it across the room. This provided a decorative finish to the otherwise barren corner, whilst simultaneously reducing the risk of any disease it could've been ridden by. Or if you were feeling really daring, you could use the pillowcase (inside out, of course) to make a soft covering for the freezing toilet seat.

After that, I turned the mattress upside down which made it much more presentable, as well as more comfortable as you didn't have to endure the feel of caked dirt and other substances caressing your body all night long, provided you could even fall asleep during your time there.

John likened my habit "prison syndrome". He treated it like a real illness, too, explaining during his visits that it was very abnormal to not feel some sort of distress while in my position. After a while, he'd accepted it as some sort of coping mechanism, and said to do whatever made me happy. So I did, I supposed.

It was still somewhat hard to get to sleep. I laid on the overturned mattress, fingers tapping against the bed frame. Disturbed, despite what John thought, wasn't what I was feeling. Instead it was restlessness. Admittedly, a month was quite a while to be out commission, something I hadn't exactly thought of when I was first arrested.

Time was passing fairly quickly, but not quickly enough. By the third week I was downright stir-crazy, something that even the guards began to notice.

"Pete, holding up alright?" Said Argus one night as he passed by my cell and noticed me still awake. Argus was a bit of a newbie — having not been a guard there for more than four months — and it showed. He held himself less confidently than some of the others, and in some ways that made it easier to talk to him on those rare occasions when he stepped out of the shadows.

I sighed from where I sat at the edge of the mattress. "Fine. Just aching to get out of here." And back on the scene, I added silently.

Argus nodded. "It's tough, isn't it?"

"I guess you could say that."

He bit his lip as he looked at me, annoyance clouding his brown eyes. "The new system is such bull when it comes to sentencing. If anything, guys like you should be in juvenile and not here."

"Seventeen is basically an adult, so you know they wouldn't have put me juvie," I rolled my eyes. "And that isn't news."

He bristled. "No, wait — they didn't tell you?"